Climate and Energy: What Trump’s Proposed Policy Actually Entails

David Hescher of Horseshoe Beach, FL, looks out at the destruction climate change-fueled Hurricane Helene caused in his neighborhood. Source: Chardan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

“Windmills rust, they rot, they kill the birds,” former president Donald Trump said in an Agenda 47 video released on Sept. 7th last year. “The Green New Deal—I call it the Green New Hoax,” he continued, referring to a plan to decarbonize the American economy. The campaign clip, titled “America Must Have the #1 Lowest Cost Energy and Electricity on Earth,” outlines the candidate’s proposed energy policies with a 5-minute monologue in which he claims to hold the key to American energy independence and China-crushing economic prosperity. Despite his opportunistic tone, Trump does not paint the whole picture. 

Chapters 1, 3, and 5 of the 2024 GOP platform, linked on the home page of Trump’s platform website, explicitly champion the complete deregulation of the American fossil fuel industry and ambiguously mention the rollback of regulations and policies implemented during the Biden administration. But what does this actually mean? Aside from green-lighting uninhibited strides in the fossil fuel sector, it means dismantling all efforts that the U.S. had made to combat climate change in the last decade. In the words of Trump himself, this looks like, “Rescinding all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA),” before repealing the act entirely. The IRA, President Biden’s hallmark piece of climate legislation, has expanded job growth in the solar and wind sectors by 5.3% and 4.5%, respectively (the national average across all industries being 1.9%). The Department of Energy projects that the act’s subsidiary impacts will result in the doubling of the share of U.S. electricity generation from clean energy by 2030. 

From an economic perspective, this all sounds great—but why does it matter? First, we know that oil deposits will be depleted before the turn of 2052. Additionally, any newfound deposits would be far too deep for substantial drilling to remain fiscally viable. This poses three options, or some combination of those options: renewables, nuclear, another fossil fuel, or some combination of the three. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has repeatedly confirmed that fossil fuel use and its consequential carbon dioxide emissions are the primary cause of global warming. Though the former president has reiterated his disagreement with this, global warming is an indisputable fact with severe economic and humanitarian repercussions. The most recognizable of those repercussions can be seen in the recent surge in intensity and frequency of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Both Hurricanes Helene and Milton are historical anomalies, and climate change-induced extra-warm surface waters in the Gulf directly caused their severity. Helene, in particular, resulted in far-reaching devastation, bringing swaths of catastrophic rainfall to regions that had never before been hit by a hurricane, much less one of this caliber. The IPCC warns that because we are currently experiencing the effects of emissions released decades ago, these disasters will worsen before they get better, and continued reliance on emission-heavy technology will heavily exacerbate impacts in the coming century. 

Not only does this mean economic instability and insurance crises, particularly in coastal regions, but it means more under-prepared communities will be ravaged, leaving millions of people without homes or routes of recourse. Displacement of these communities leads to what is known as climate refugeeism. The International Displacement Monitoring Centre expects up to 1.2 billion people to reach climate refugee status before 2050. This means 1.2 billion people without homes and access to food and clean water—not only in developing countries (who are already feeling impacts), but also lower, middle, and upper-class citizens of wealthy countries like the U.S. Aside from the humanitarian concerns this entails, pressure will be placed on unaffected communities which will be forced to act as sanctuary. Moreover, industries that rely on the jobs those refugees once held will collapse. 

Of course, this is only one facet of the devastation that will be brought on by climate change. However, it is still evident that maintaining reliance on fossil fuels is not an option if we wish to sustain modern life. This reliance is exactly what Trump plans to maintain through his deregulation plan. But what about nuclear power?

As opposed to fossil fuels, nuclear energy produces next to zero emissions, and the amount of ‘nuclear fuel’ (i.e. uranium) required to produce the energy is microscopic compared to the amount extractable from reserves. Proponents of nuclear energy cite that, at current consumption rates, nuclear fuel reserves could last up to 200 years, even without considering any newfound reserves. Given the increased consumption of nuclear energy, which is absolutely necessary in the absence of fossil fuels, though, this number dwindles to around 90 years—even with supplemental energy sources. If neither alternative fossil fuels nor nuclear can sustain us long-term, only one option remains: renewables. 

Much of the opposition surrounding renewables regards the availability of the energy that they produce. This comes from a problem known as intermittency, which is precisely what it sounds like: the intermittent nature of the natural phenomena that fuel renewable sources (i.e. the sun being unavailable for solar panels during the night). The solution to this issue is battery storage. These systems can be expensive, but they are highly effective and entirely negate the need for energy sources outside of renewables. 

So, if we can avoid catapulting climate change into the stratosphere, what is stopping us from going all in? Money. While renewables are definitively more cost-effective than fossil fuels, the latter benefits from its industries of scale and is far more available (and cheaper) to the general public. Renewables also require battery systems, which are a costly hurdle. With an established system of renewable dispatch, however, utilities would be vastly cheaper for the average American than they are now, and the climate-devastating ramifications of continued fossil fuel use would be reduced. One way to establish this system is through government intervention, perhaps through a subsidiary act (legislation that delegates government funding to bolster an industry or project), which is arguably the quickest and most effective way to do so.

The IRA resulted in the largest investment surge in the U.S. renewables sector in the nation’s history, has created upwards of 200,000 domestic industry jobs, and has more than doubled the share of renewables in the nation’s electricity portfolio. The act also resulted in the construction and operation of 14 new manufacturing facilities dedicated to producing battery storage systems at the cheapest possible price point. Further, it doubled tax credits for research and development (known industrially as R&D) for businesses large and small. Combining the price-reducing impacts of R&D on battery production, the increased battery manufacturing, and the boom in investments in the renewables sector, the IRA is specifically designed to bolster the only industry that has the potential to bring down utility prices for consumers while avoiding climate catastrophe. 

This is the act that Trump has vowed to repeal. 

While neither the GOP nor the Democratic party has offered candidates that are fully dedicated to fossil fuel elimination and renewable development, the GOP has offered a candidate whose environmental platform—though technically nonexistent given his disbelief in climate science—consists of three core tenants: deregulate fossil fuels, wipe the IRA, and bolster U.S. coal and oil industries. Without paying proper heed to the risks that this poses, U.S. citizens can expect a future with eventually-spiked utility prices, exacerbated natural disasters, displacement of entire communities, and far-reaching economic downfall brought on by all three of the former.